Myanmar Decentralizing Funding to Schools

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The objective of the Decentralizing Funding to Schools Project is to help improve and expand Myanmar's School Grants Program and Student Stipends Program. There are three components to the project, the first component being expansion and improvement of the school grants program. All schools with primary students currently supported by government budget funding are eligible for participation in the school grants program. Expansion of the program, therefore, will mean increasing the size of annual operating grants to schools from approximately US$250, US$400 and US$500 per school for small, medium and large schools, respectively, to targets of US$900, US$1,200 and US$1,800 per school, respectively, over a four year period. The second component is the expansion and improvement of the student stipends program. While all government-supported schools in Myanmar are nominally eligible to participate in the existing student stipends program, the small size of the program (11,000 stipends to be awarded nationwide) effectively means that, while most schools apply for stipends funding, few schools are actually selected to participate in the program and those that do participate would have, in most cases, no more than two stipend students. Finally, the third component is the capacity improvement to strengthen monitoring and implementation of programs. This project will focus on training, and on conducting a baseline assessment of early grade reading. On training, Ministry of Education, or MoE will design and begin implementing a national training program during school year 2014-15 aimed at introducing the new school grants and stipends program to township officials and school headmasters.